My Flowers Were Dying

My flowers were dying. 

The pink heads of the peonies were shrivelled, and there was an absence where the petals used to delicately hang. 

I asked my grandmother if there was any way I could save my precious flowers.

I didn’t want them to die.

She told me there was no way I could. 

“Sometimes things cannot be saved,” she told me.

I looked up at her face.

Her wrinkles were more prominent than ever, and her eyes were the same colour as the ends of my dead flower petals.

“Will I be able to save you?” I asked.

“No, dear.” she responded.

She caressed my cheek with her soft fingertips as I sat on her lap. 

A tear fell from my eye and dampened her finger.

“You are only young. You shouldn’t think of such things.”

Her soft mutterings turned melodically into a tune.

“Young girl, for as long as you are here, I am here with you.” 

I kept my flowers in the hopes that one day they would flourish again, but they never did. 

I planted them in a patch of soil in our front garden, it didn’t work.

I even put them in the bath, but this too was unsuccessful.

I asked my older brother to take them to the florists down the road, but he laughed in my face.

“The only place they flowers goin’ is the bin.”

And he was right.

One day when I came back from school my flowers were nowhere to be seen. 

Crumbly remnants of dried up petals covered my dresser, but the flowers were gone.

I checked the garden, I checked the bath, I even checked the basement.

“Mumma, mumma my flowers are gone!” I cried.

“They are in the bin little girl.”

I wept in bed, I wept in school, I even wept at church.

I thought maybe my tears could have saved the flowers, but now I would never know.

The next time Grandmother came to visit, I told her about my dead flowers.

She looked frail, and seemed distant. 

Her arms were too weak to pick me up onto her lap, and so I stood.

“I’m sorry dear.”

Grandmother was the only one that cared about my flowers.

“Take this,” she said, handing me a small brown envelope, enclosed with a lavender sealing wax.

Inside was a small peony.

It was flat, and dried up, but the pink was the prettiest pink I had ever seen.

“It’s one of your flowers, I pressed it for you. When you get home, put it in a frame, and you will have it forever.”

“It won't die?” I asked in disbelief.

“No, it won't.” she responded. 

“You promise?”

“I promise.”